If you’re like me (and I wouldn’t wish that on any of you, mind you), you probably spend a lot of time superheroes.  And if you’re like me, you also probably spend a lot of time watching cartoons, building crossbows, and trying to work the phrase “blue-butted baboons” into as much of your writing as humanly possible.  So it’s probably just as well you’re not like me after all, but this still ties in with the whole cartoon-watching thing.  Which brings me, via the most awkward of segues, to the Justice League.  Whether you’re a die-hard fan, or not even cognizant of their existence, they’re up there in the Watchtower making sure the world is safe, so maybe it’s time we all took a closer look at them.  Also, since there’s more people in the Justice League now than there are Pokemon (Martian Manhunter, I choose you!), I’m just gonna do the original seven today, and in the process, try to raise a few though-provoking and ridiculous questions about them.

            First, there’s Superman.  He’s kind of the leader of the team, and comes with all your standard super hero features.  Flying, bulletproofness, eye-lasers, costume made out of an invulnerable baby blanket, super strength, and living in a world of people so dumb that they can’t tell he’s really Clark Kent.  Did you ever wonder what he did with his normal clothes when he changed into Superman?  I still do (I never bought that whole thing about him having a secret pocket in his cape).  At the moment, my best guess is that he just eats them, and then barfs them up later and tries to iron them with his heat-vision.  Either that, or he spends a fortune at the Big and Tall and just leaves his old ones in the phone booth.  Also, how did he ever make it through grade school without being discovered?  I mean, you’d think people would have suspected something when he went to get his vaccinations and it turned out he was invulnerable.  Man, people in Smallville must just be supremely uncurious (“Huh, looks like that Kent boy picked up another tractor today, ah well, none boys will be boys.”). 

            Batman comes next, and is unique in the sense that he has no super powers at all.  Except for the fact that he can do absolutely anything at all, as long as it happens off-screen.  Like, Batman might be tied up with titanium ropes in the hold of a rocket that’s hurtling towards the Sun, but as the villain of the week (Nelson Mandella) enters the control room for his death ray (he does have one, you know), there’s Batman!  How does he escapes?  Nobody knows.  Personally, I think he actually just has all sorts of awesome super powers, like super turkey-basting, or being able to detonate squirrels with the power of his mind, but he’s just too modest to use them in front of the other League members.  Also, he can have any piece of technology or equipment in the world, as long as you can tack the word bat onto its name.  Yes, from his Batarangs, to his trusty batamaran (really, I just wanted an excuse to work the word “Batamaran” in here somewhere), if you can always depend on Batman to have some piece of equipment that, other than the fact that it’s named after him, has absolutely nothing to do with bats (Why are they called Batarangs anyway?  They don’t come back.  They just stick in something and then usually explode shoot out electricity or beef or something).

            Then we come to Martian Manhunter, but since that doesn’t sound nearly as cuddly as a hero’s name ought to, everybody calls him John Jones, only spelled funny to emphasize his Martianity.  Like most aliens, he came here by crossing the Rio Grande, but when the landscaping business he was working for got shut down by the government, he decided to go into the hero business.  He’s telepathic, which lets him read people’s minds, and really supervillians he’s talking to by saying everything they were going to say a split second before them (this makes Lex Luthor so angry).  Also, he can phase through stuff, so he’s always floating eerily through the Watchtower, freaking out everyone, or catching Batman and Wonder Woman making out in the back of his Batvan.  His one weakness is fire, but only if someone actually say, hits him with a fireball or throws him into a volcano.  Which, I guess is kind of a weakness if you’re otherwise invincible, but really its kind of like saying that most people are weak against bullets and hand grenades.

            Okay, there’s still four more people to go, and this is already running on long enough, so assuming I don’t either get called away by Doug Wilder to save Richmond from the evil clutches of a blue-butted baboon, or just decide to write about a Hitler sitcom, I’ll finish this one up tomorrow.